When I heard a West Seattle resident took the title of world champion at the Pokémon TCG Masters Division last weekend, I pictured a 30-something dude who got really, really good at a trading-card game while hanging out in his mom’s unfinished basement eating pizza rolls.

Then I found out David Cohen is a kid, so I guess it’s OK that he probably lives with his mom. What a relief.

Gary Locke, the former Washington governor and current U.S. ambassador to China, is making headlines before he even officially starts his new gig — but it’s not for anything related to international policy.

A photo of Locke is causing a stir online, but it’s not that kind of a photo. (Think Anthony Weiner, then imagine the polar opposite.)

Locke, known for his straight-man personality, is in the limelight for buying his own coffee.

Think you know Seattle pretty well? Then you won’t have any trouble recognizing these around-the-town icons up close and personal. Let us know how you did in the comments below. Visit seattlepi.com’s …

The NOAA Climate Prediction Center recently issued a “La Niña Watch” for the Northern hemisphere this fall, adding that there are equal chances of neutral or La Niña conditions in the winter.

In case you’ve repressed what that means, think back just a few months. The fall and winter of 2010-11 were also part of a La Niña cycle, which happens when water temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean are cooler than usual.

The era of Jonathan’s Card is over. The social experiment by Jonathan Stark of Rhode Island was nixed by Starbucks last week, meaning strangers can’t buy coffee or reload Stark’s public coffee card anymore.

The computer programmer invited strangers to buy coffee with the bar code on his Starbucks card to see if givers would keep up with takers — and for a while, the experiment proved successful.

The card was shuttered Friday by Starbucks, citing fraud concerns. But Stark said he doesn’t want that to mean an end to paying it forward.

It’s still wintertime at Mount Rainier — at least, that’s how it looks. Snow covers the dormant volcano’s slopes, and hikers are staying away.

Let’s just say it’s one more sign that the Pacific Northwest got the short end of the weather stick this year. (And last year, but who’s counting? Certainly not me on my vitamin-D deprived fingers.)

The New York Times recently ran a story on Rainer’s sorry excuse for a summer, reporting visitors to the National Park are down 30 percent and that rangers are advising the use of ice axes in certain parts of the mountain.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz isn’t thrilled with how politicians have been racking up deficits, and he wants to cut off the lifeblood of their reelection campaigns until they shape up.

More specifically, he wants other power players in the business world to follow his lead and stop financially supporting to politicians until figure out a way to deal with the nation’s mounting debt.

“I am asking that all of us forego political contributions until the Congress and the President return to Washington and deliver a fiscally disciplined long-term debt and deficit plan to the American people,” Schultz wrote in an e-mail sent to business leaders last week.